<Kemble at Trinity College, Cambridge. Membership of the Apostles. Undergraduate notebooks in the Library of Congress. Hooper Declamation Prize 1827.>
Among Kemble's friends at Trinity in the late 1820s were Hallam, Thackeray, and Tennyson. In 1829 or 1830 Tennyson wrote a sonnet 'To J.M.K.', celebrating Kemble's decision to abandon his original intention to pursue a career in law, and instead to pursue a career in the Church. At the same time, the sonnet reflects Tennyson's presumption (as a fellow-Apostle) that Kemble would be anything but conventional.
To J.M.K
My hope and heart is with thee – thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master's feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distilled from some worm-cankered homily;
But spurred at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.
<Departure from Cambridge on the 'Spanish Expedition', 1830-1.>